Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Visible Light Communications

TL;DR

This paper explores the application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to visible light communication (VLC) to improve data rates, proposing a novel power allocation strategy and analyzing the impact of LED angles and receiver FOVs.

Contribution

It introduces a gain ratio power allocation (GRPA) method for NOMA in VLC and examines how LED angles and receiver FOVs can enhance system performance.

Findings

GRPA significantly improves system throughput over static power allocation

Adjusting LED angles and FOVs provides additional performance gains

Simulation confirms NOMA's potential for high-rate VLC downlink networks

Abstract

The main limitation of visible light communication (VLC) is the narrow modulation bandwidth, which reduces the achievable data rates. In this paper, we apply the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme to enhance the achievable throughput in high-rate VLC downlink networks. We first propose a novel gain ratio power allocation (GRPA) strategy that takes into account the users' channel conditions to ensure efficient and fair power allocation. Our results indicate that GRPA significantly enhances system performance compared to the static power allocation. We also study the effect of tuning the transmission angles of the light emitting diodes (LEDs) and the field of views (FOVs) of the receivers, and demonstrate that these parameters can offer new degrees of freedom to boost NOMA performance. Simulation results reveal that NOMA is a promising multiple access scheme for the downlink of VLC networks.